22 Oct 2020, 9:20 am
After decades of witnessing demonstrations of alleged "psychic" abilities, I can finally codify the behavior of every alleged "psychic" demonstration I have ever witnessed. What follows is a slightly sarcastic outline of the general behavior of each of those alleged "psychics".
Enjoy!
How to Demonstrate Your Psychic Abilities
Suppose you have been invited to give a demonstration of your psychic abilities to a panel of scientists, engineers, private investigators, and stage magicians. All of you agree upon the conditions and protocol for the demonstration. You arrive and find that every condition has been met, and that everyone is ready to begin. You settle in, confident in your abilities, proceed with the demonstration, and...
... nothing happens.
You try again, with the same results. A third try elicits only polite applause and a "Thank you" from the panel of experts. What do you do now?
First, deny the failure. Your ability actually worked, but either there are "Dark Forces" at work to conceal that fact from the experts, or the experts simply cannot perceive the results.
Second, claim to have misunderstood the conditions and protocol. Explain your misunderstanding in a way that both excuses your apparent failure and absolves you of all blame.
Third, diminish your failure; "It happens, sometimes". Dismiss the failure as nothing important -- you really do not have to prove anything to anyone, anyway.
Fourth, blame the panel of experts for their too-strict reliance upon logic, physical laws, reason, science, technology, and their five normal human senses.
Finally, when all else fails, attack each member of the panel of experts for their obvious lack of empathy, ethics, intelligence, moral standards, and/or personal hygiene.
22 Oct 2020, 9:51 am
Speak in broad, abstract terms, so you cannot be pinned down, and be proven wrong.
Psychic: "her body is near a body of water".
Skeptic 1: "can you be more specific?".
Skeptic 2: "most everything is near a body of water".
News report: "AMAZING! Just as the psychic predicted, her body was found five miles from a swimming pool".
